Luch, a newspaper which succeeds in making the more
“clamour” among circles of the intelligentsia the less the workers read
it, continues its advocacy of an open workers’ party with
a zeal worthy of a better cause.

In the New-Year leading article of the paper we read an old untruth,
namely, that the year 1912 “put forward, as its current slogan and as the
militant banner of the Russia of the workers, the struggle for freedom of
association and the struggle for the open existence of the
Social-Democratic Labour Party”.

Anyone who really came into contact with the workers’ mass movement in
1912 and carefully observed its political character knows very well that
the liquidators of Luch are telling an untruth. What the workers
did put forward as their current slogan and militant banner was
something else. This was particularly evident, for example, in
May, when the foremost workers of different trends (even with a Narodnik
minority participating along with the Social-Democratic majority)
themselves put forward a different slogan and unfurled a
different “militant banner”.

The intellectuals of Luch know that, but they are trying to
impose their want of faith, their narrow understanding
and their opportunism on the workers. A familiar picture with
nothing new about it! In Russia, however, the authors of this distortion
are able to put it forward all the more easily because it has the monopoly
of “open” expression in certain fields.

For all that, the untruth of Luch remains an untruth. And it
becomes worse when Luch continues:

“It is this slogan that will form the pivot of the
political mobilisation of the mass of the workers in 1913....”

In other words, in defiance of the mass of the workers, who
have already advanced a different slogan, the intellectuals of
Luch are going to dock and curtail it! You are free to do that,
gentlemen, but what you are promoting is a liberal and not a
Social-Democratic cause.

Let the reader recall the recent controversy between Luch and
Pravda over an open party. Why is it that even the Cadets were
unable to found an open party?—Pravda
asked.[1]
And F. D., writing in Luch, replied:

“The Cadets recognised that their desire was utopian”
when they failed to get their Rules approved; as for the liquidators, they
carried an “stubborn methodical work, winning one position after another”
(see Luch No. 73).

You see: F. D. evaded giving a reply! The Cadets, too, carried on
stubborn work and they, too, were “winning positions” in legal
publications and legal unions. But even the Cadets have no open
party.

Why, then, do the Cadets continue to dream and talk of an open party?
Because they are the party of the counter revolutionary liberal
bourgeoisie, which is willing to make peace with the
Purishkeviches for certain little concessions to the liberals, for the
little concession of a “peaceful” open Cadet party.

That is the objective significance—which does not depend on good
wishes and fine words—of the talk about an open party under the June
Third regime. This talk is a repudiation of consistent democracy,
and an advocacy of peace with the Purishkeviches.

It is unimportant what aims the liquidators pursue by their
advocacy of an open party, or what their intentions and expectations
are. That is a subjective question; it is well known that the road to hell
is paved with “good” intentions. What is important is the objective
significance of the advocacy of an open workers’ party under the June Third
regime, with a non-open liberal party, etc.

This objective significance of the liquidators’ talk about an open
party is a repudiation of the popular and fundamental conditions and
demands of democracy.

That is why every politically-conscious worker reacts adversely to the
liquidators’ propaganda, for the issue of an open party” is a
fundamental question, one that concerns the very
existence of the working-class Party. It is the very existence of a
genuine workers’ party that is being radically undermined by liquidationist
propaganda.